Fallout: Exodus (Fallout: New Vegas fan-fiction)
by TheGeorgieB
Summary: When a group of survivors are threatened by a vicious band of raiders, they must journey across the Mojave Wasteland in search of a new home. However, Ghouls, Super Mutants and Slavers are the least of their worriers when their biggest threat emerges from within their own ranks.


FALLOUT: EXODUS is a fan-made saga taking place in the Mojave Wasteland. Each chapter takes place from the POV of one of five different characters. The chapter below takes place from the POV of Stanley. Whereer he goes, you as the reader will go too. This is a story I've been working on for a while now and, whilst this first chapter is not the most action-packed, I hope you'll stick with it for another two or three chapters, as I have some great things in mind for this story and its characters, who I hope you will grow to love as you get to know them. Enjoy!

Fallout: Exodus

Stanley

Stanley threw another log of freshly chopped wood onto the campfire. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead, rolled down his cheeks and trickled into his mouth until Stanley could taste the salt. Keeping the campfire alive was exhausting work, especially in this heat, but the day was almost at its end and, come the nightfall, they would all be glad a fire was burning. It might just be what kept them alive when night returned.

"Somebody's working hard," Carley observed from the porch of the old saloon. She leaned over the parch, smiling at Stanley and inviting him to join her.

He did so as soon as Johann arrived to cover his shift. "Maybe a little too hard," Stanley replied as he wiped sweat from his brow. It did little good. He still reeked of sweat from head to toe, but such didn't seem to bother Carley. "How was the hunt?"

That's when Carley averted her eyes. "It was... okay," she lied. Having spent the better years of her life cooped up in a Vault, it had never been required of Carley to learn how to hunt for her floor, or even how to shoot a gun for that matter, having had all of her meals supplied to her. Locke had tried to teach her, but Carley still struggled to shoot straight. Stanley suspected that she'd once again scared off whatever varmint they had been hunting today.

"Did you guys catch anything?" Stanley asked. If they had, he already knew it hadn't been on Carley's account. He could only hope Locke or one of the others had had better luck.

Carley returned her gaze to Stanley, an excited look having grown on her face. "Yeah, actually," she exclaimed as the two walked across the wooden porch, the scorched planks creaking wildly beneath their every step. "Locke was able to catch a couple of Coyotes. They were part of pack of six, or maybe seven. Either way, I scared the rest of 'em off when I tried to shoot the Mother and missed."

"Well, at least that means there are more out there should we continue to run low on food," Stanley observed. "Besides, if we'd have caught an entire pack, who knows whether we'd have been able to cook and eat all of them before the meat went bad." It wasn't much in the way of comfort, but it seemed to reassure Carley enough for her to offer him a faint smile in return.

"You know, your son bagged his first Brahmin today," she remembered, which quickly filled Stanley with pride. "It was Locke that spotted it, but your Jacob that pulled the trigger."

"That boy really is something, huh?" As Stanley's thoughts became of his son, and only of his son, it quickly occurred to him that he hadn't yet seen Jacob pass through the camp's gates. "Where is he, by the way?" He asked, his eyes searching the camp for any sign of his son.

"He's still with Locke and Earl," she explained, which almost put Stanley's mind at rest. He wouldn't feel completely sound again until Jacob was back by his side. "They're carrying our food back, needed me to scout ahead, make sure the coast is clear."

Stanley chuckled nervously. "So, shouldn't you get back and tell them?"

"I will," Carley assured him. "I just wanted to let you know I was safe," she explained before leaning in closer. "I know how worried you get," she said with almost a whisper before winking at Stanley and turning her back on him.

Stanley watched from the porch as Carley walked all the way through the camp, nodding, smiling and exchanging pleasantries with fellow camp dwellers, towards the gates of the iron fence that surrounded the entirety of the camp. The jaws of the iron gate had been left wide open since Carley's return. She slipped through the gate and, within a matter of seconds, the Mojave Wasteland had swallowed her up again. Stanley prayed a silent prayer that she would return home safely.

On that porch, his gaze wandered across the colony of tents that had been set up in the centre of the camp, which had been the cause behind Locke famously dubbing the camp "Tent City". He saw Bonnie, Carley's teen-aged sister, who was handing a basket of freshly washed clothes to Alice, who shared the tent next to Bonnie with her elderly husband Jack.

Bonnie shared Carley's freckled cheeks, but not her hopelessness when it came to handling guns. As a matter of fact, Bonnie was quite the marksman. So much so that Locke tended to exclude her from their daily hunt, most likely fearing that he would be shown up by a girl.

Locke had always been an arrogant and opinionated man, but that perhaps was his finest quality. Stanley, Carley and the other survivors needed a man to rally behind in this unjust, dying world. Whether Stanley liked or not, there was not denying, Locke was that man. The ex-slaver had been the reason behind their survival these past couple of years. Despite the man's less than savoury past, Stanley trusted him. If anything, his experience as a slaver means that Locke was far from being afraid of getting his hands dirty, a situation of which he often found himself required.

Locke's hands were plenty dirty, but Stanley's were nice and clean.

That was when Stanley spotted his son emerging from the fiery wastes of the Mojave, rushing through the iron gates of Tent City.

"Jacob!" He exclaimed happily as he stepped from the porch and wandered towards his son. However, his relief soon disappeared, and the familiar feeling of panic racing through his heart quickly made itself known when Stanley saw Locke and Earl follow him through the gates, carrying a man by the arms between them.

Stanley's legs moved faster as he rushed between the tents towards the iron gate. He saw Locke and Earl drop their captive into the dry sand beneath their feet, quick to be rid of him. Stanley did not recognise the man, although the beating that had been served upon him may have been to blame. His battered face had already began to swell, and the blood had trickled all the way down from his cheeks to toes of his shoes.

Stanley quickly turned his attention back to his son, who stood staring at the man spitting sand from his mouth. He put his hands on Jacob's shoulders, and knelt to meet his height. "Jacob," he murmured. The boy finally pulled his gaze from the stranger in their midst to meet his father's eyes. "Are you alright, son?"

He never got an answer.

"Close the gates!" He heard Carley ordered as she joined the others.

"What the fuck is _this _shit!?" Stanley heard Donnie, the camp's own loud-mouth teenager, shout from behind upon noticing all the commotion.

When he turned to shut Donnie up, Staley noticed that a large crowd had now formed around Locke and Earl, and the stranger they had brought into Tent City. Stanley soon realised he was at the head of the crowd, so he spoke first. "Locke," he said, loud enough that the ex-slaver snapped up to meet Stanley's gaze. "What's going on? Who is this man?"

Locke took a moment to look around him, at the crowd that had formed. He could see the confused, frightened looks on their tired faces. He scratched furiously at his bald head; a sign of the man's temper growing. "This man..." He paused and began to circle the stranger. "This... _raider_," he corrected, "was caught spying on our camp". His words were met with an orchestra of murmurs and mutterings from the settlers in the crowd. Some even gasped, merely at the sound of the word _raider_.

Stanley saw Earl spit. He guessed that Earl was the one to blame for the raider's severe beating. The chunky hillbilly had possessed a particular hatred for raiders ever since his teen-aged daughter had been raped and murdered by a small party of raiders back in Texas.

Having realised that a blanket of silence had descended upon the rest of the camp, Stanley spoke up. "Was he alone?" He asked, half afraid to hear the answer.

Locke nodded. "He was. But, as we all know, a raider camp lies only five miles west of here," he reminded the people of Tent City in a raspy voice. Locke had first spotted the camp during a hunt four months ago. Its presence had been keeping the people of Tent City on their toes ever since. "I think it's a safe bet that that's where this scumbag came from," he declared before delivering a swift kick to the raider's back. Stanley heard him grunt in pain. "Should this raider ever get word of our location back to his camp... Well... I don't think I need to say anymore."

He didn't, with that much Stanley could agree. For once, Locke had said more than enough.

"So..." Carley began, stepping in from behind. "What do you suggest?" Carley asked Locke, knowing, and dreading, his answer.

Instead, the answer came from Earl. "I think we all know," he blurted before Locke could offer his own suggestion. Stanley had long grown tired of hearing his Texan accent.

To everyone's surprise, the next voice came within the crowd of settlers. "We can't just kill him!" It yelled. The voice belonged to Bonnie, Carley's sister, who quickly emerged from the crowd to show her small, mousy face. "And don't tell me you weren't suggesting otherwise," she fired at Earl, who was taken by surprise, as was everybody else.

"Bonnie, stay out of this." Carley approached her sister, sighing as she urged her to rejoin the crowd and stop embarrassing her.

Bonnie shoved her sister aside to confront Locke, who barley winced as she pointed a grubby finger inches from his face. "I don't care if he's a raider, he's still a human being! If we just kill people whenever we feel like it, how are we any different from them?" She asked, provoking a mixed reaction from the crowd.

"I agree with Bonnie," Stanley announced, earning a smile from Carley's sister, and a wide grimace from Locke. Both were short lived. "We can't kill him," he repeated. "But, we also can't just let him go," he continued. He put an arm over Jacob's shoulder, hoping his son was listening to all of this.

"He's right," Carley agreed, looking down at the raider in the sand. He looked harmless enough, but Stanley dreaded to think the kind of damage he could do with a blade in his hand, and a dozen more raiders at his side. "We should lock him up until we can think of something else." _Something smarter_, was what Stanley knew she really meant.

"Okay," Locke agreed begrudgingly. Causing Earl to spit and waddle back to his tent defeated. "But we can't hold him here forever," he assured them. "We barely have enough food for the camp dwellers as it is." Locke plucked a couple of men out of the crowd to take the raider to be chained up somewhere. Right next to the lavatory, Stanley hoped.

"Thanks for backing me up," Stanley told Carley as they returned to each other's sides.

"No problem," Carley assured Stanley, and winked again.

"This isn't right," Bonnie went on as the crowd began to disperse. "We can't just keep him chained up like some wild animal." She sighed, powerless to do anything.

Stanley walked Carley to her tent and said goodnight. Back at his own tent, he found Jacob reading under torchlight. "What are you reading there, sport?" He asked as he slipped into his sleeping bag.

"It's a Wasteland Survival Guide," he explained, flicking through the pages. "I found it whilst we were out hunting a couple of days ago. I was... I was looking to see if there was anything about raiders in here," he finally admitted.

Stanley chuckled, and Jacob blushed. "Listen, son. You don't have to worry," he promised Jacob, placing a hand on his son's shoulder. "That raider out there isn't going anywhere, Locke and the others will make sure of that." He knew, even now, Bonnie would still be begging Locke to let their prisoner go, claiming that we were taking away his human rights. Stanley, however, didn't believe raiders to be deserving of such rights. "And whatever group he was scouting for, they'll never find this place," he reassured his son, though he only half believed it himself. "We're five miles away from civilization of any kind. Nobody would think to come looking here." He began to lose track of whether this speech was meant to reassure Jacob, or himself.

"Okay," Jacob uttered, though he sounded less than convinced. He tucked his book away and dimmed the torchlight, leaving just enough light to cast a tiny shadow across the sheet of the tent as the little boy tucked himself into his sleeping bag. "Night, Dad."

"Goodnight, son." Stanley rolled onto his side and closed his eyes.

He awoke to find his son tugging on his bed sheets. "Dad, wake up," he urged. "Something's wrong." He could tell that much from anxious the look on his son's face.

"What is it? What's going on?" He asked. A woman's scream from outside was his answer.

Stanley, still barefoot, rushed out of his tent and across the camp where he discovered a crowd had already formed. He shoved his way past such recognizable faces as Bonnie, Johann, Alice, Jack, Donnie and many more until had pushed through to the front row. "Jesus," was all he could manage to utter.

Before him, Locke knelt, his hands and leather armour drenched with another man's blood. Beside him lay the corpse of Earl who, less than ten hours ago, had been standing where he now lay dead. His neck had been opened. His wife-beater vest and torn jeans were crusty where his blood had dried.

"Who did this?" Stanley begged to know, his voice shaken by the adrenaline.

"It was the raider," Carley revealed, whilst Locke remained silent, brooding beside the corpse of his friend. Carley couldn't bare to look at the dead man. "He escaped."

That was when Locke rose to his feet. "He didn't escape," he explained, his eyes sunk in deep pits of shadow. "Someone let him go." Stanley could hear the rage in his voice.

Stanley felt his heart sink. He knew what this meant; they all did. He and Carley shared a worried glance.

"Everybody start packing," Locke instructed the people of Tent City. "As soon as that raider gets word back to his people, they'll be back here with enough fire-power to burn Tent City to the ground, and kill every last man, woman and child still living in it."

The people of Tent City did not dawdle.


End file.
